I agree fully with you Chad. Of course it is a nice thing this collaborative video stuff, but did we really need it that bad? How will this benefit the existing projects?

Something very dodgy is going on in my opinion - this commercial start-up has entered the foundation as if it was the most natural thing. I wonder what part Wikia plays in all this?

Ian [[User: Poeloq]]

On Fri, 2008-01-18 at 15:34 -0500, Chad wrote:

When Flash itself becomes open-source, I'll join. Until then, I'm not touching it and I encourage the community to do the same.

The Foundation announcing support of some random YouTube-clone startup is really the final straw. They have now /officially/ abandoned the vision of free content.

Chad

On Jan 18, 2008 3:07 PM, Jay A. Walsh jwalsh@wikimedia.org wrote:

...

Simultaneous send to wikitech-l, foundation-l, and commons-l

Hi folks,

Yesterday the Wikimedia Foundation, Kaltura, and WikiEducator made a combined announcement about our beta collaborative video project. You can see the announcement here:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Invites_Users_to_Take_Part_in_...

The Foundation has set up a landing page here:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Collaborative_Video

with more background and information. We'll keep it updated regularly.

WikiEducator has done the same here:

http://wikieducator.org/Help:Collaborative_video

with specific instructions on how to participate in the beta.

Through this project the parties will be able to explore the potential for developing open-source, collaborative video or slideshows for the Foundation's projects. Collaborative video is simply a collection of images, video, and sound edited and combined by one or more collaborators.

The technology, which many of you may already be familiar with, will be demonstrated on WikiEducator - which is not a WMF project. Those of us involved in the Wikimedia Foundation projects will have a chance to examine the software, test its limits, and ultimately improve our ability to bring multi-media, free knowledge content to our users. We recognize that Kaltura's software and interface are still not 100% open-source, and as such the technology will not appear on any Foundation projects until we've worked through some of the technical challenges - which is where you come in.

Kaltura has released their code to the open-source community to help this project along. It's available on SourceForge,

http://sourceforge.net/projects/kaltura .

We're excited that an innovative, private business has taken strong initiative in embracing open-source development.

You're invited to examine the code, test the technology as it exists on WikiEducator, and help us bring this functionality to the Wikimedia Foundation projects over the coming months. You'll find a feedback process on the WikiEducator landing page, and of course we fully welcome discussion about the technology on the lists.

Thanks,

-- Jay Walsh Head of Communications WikimediaFoundation.org 1 (415) 287-0680

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On 18/01/2008, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:

The Foundation announcing support of some random YouTube-clone startup is really the final straw. They have now /officially/ abandoned the vision of free content.

Would you care to justify this assertion with anything? I see a particularly *pointless* decision, but no-one's eating any babies here.

On 1/18/08, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:

When Flash itself becomes open-source, I'll join.

http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/

Kaltura is actively exploring different ways to build a UI that runs only on open source components:

* helping out the Gnash developers * implementing a simpler UI using either HTML/JavaScript, or Java * lobbying for an open source release of Adobe Flash itself, etc.

I'm sure they will appreciate feedback from the more technical folks on this list to work towards a fully open source solution for both the player and the editor components. They've been highly responsive in addressing community concerns, which is the primary reason we're working with them: if our cooperation with them incentivizes them to - change their license from CC-BY-NC-SA to CC-BY-SA - release their existing code under GPLv3 - seriously explore Ogg Theora & Ogg Vorbis codecs - publicly support open standards & open source - work towards a 100% open collaborative video solution,

then all those are positive outcomes. This partnership is not driven by any other motive than to advance open video collaboration on the web. It is non-exclusive and non-committal: If Kaltura does not succeed in building an open solution, or if the open source ecosystem creates something else that is superior, then we have no obligation whatsoever to use their software.

As for the ToS issue, they're aware of it; I'm sure it will get resolved amicably very quickly, as did the licensing issue.

The primary cost associated with this project is the time spent on mailing lists arguing about it :-)

On Jan 18, 2008 5:05 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:

On 1/18/08, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:

...

When Flash itself becomes open-source, I'll join.

http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/

This is a nice opportunities to inform the spectators about Gnash and its role in the world.

First a little background,

The web is a remarkable achievement of man kind. More people than ever before have had more ability to learn and speak to others than ever before in our history. And while not everyone can access the web *yet*, we can see how to get there and the completion of that great endeavor.

One of the critical factors in the level of freedom and universal access that the web provides is that the web has historically been from entirely open technology. Private interests do not execute exclusive control over its standards, and they can be implemented by anyone without patent or other forms of obligation.

Any use of proprietary technology in the web is a serious hurdle in the goal of completely free and universal access. A proprietary technology allows its controlling party to extract a little tax on the use of that technology. For someone like me, in a wealthy first world nation, these fees inconsequential and will be completely hidden for me, although in order to maximally preserve that lock-in the software usually must be proprietary, when the real mission is to radically empower the whole world, even and especially the fantastically poor and to do so while preserving everyone's freedom it simply can't be tolerated.

Unlike some other people, I do not think companies like Adobe, or Apple are *evil* for promoting and controlling their proprietary formats. There is BIG money in doing so, and they have obligations to their shareholders. If we are willing to pay, they will be willing to charge. It's their nature, not evil.

But we should be wise and recognize the history, and know that proprietary formats are bad for the public interest and demand better.

Now Gnash,

There is a big problem today: For the first time in a long time a substantial portion of the web is NOT USABLE with a free environment. While flash has had a reasonable level of adoption for some time it use was mostly limited to a subset of entertainment websites. The damage was limited.

In the last year or so, Flash has become widely used on sites that a lot of people care about. This sudden growth in use isn't really attributable to any great technology in flash, but rather because when flash got video support it filled a gap in the web feature set which existed because all the popular video formats were also proprietary and too busy warring with each other (MSFT vs APPLE vs REAL vs..)

So this has created a tremendous bleeding, people promoting free software systems are encountering pushback which they wouldn't have otherwise. "This free software computer sucks! It can't play flash!".

This is where Gnash comes in. It stops the bleeding. "Here, now this free software computer plays flash so you can migrate."

Gnash does not, however, solve most of the worst issues with flash: 1) No free authoring tools for flash. People who don't pay the piper can read but not write. 2) Flash de-facto standard purely controlled by a single commercial interest. (Think "Flash aint done till Gnash won't run") 3) Flash (video) can not be completely and compatibility implemented without infringing a number of recent (and solid) software patents (incidentally, unlike most software patents, codec patents are fairly well established in Europe in the sense that a lot of European companies hold them and a lot of European companies are paying for them).

So, Gnash stems the bleeding. It is good and deserves support. But Gnash does not stop the injury. The promotion of flash content is creating the injury and it can only be stopped by widespread use of free alternatives.

Fortunately free alternatives for most of flash's applications already exist, at least piecewise.

1) Javascript + SVG enabled web-browsers can natively do most of what flash does. 2) Native free format video support for that above will soon exist in popular browsers. 3) Java is still more far powerful than flash for programmability, and has mostly resolved the freedom issues.

The mere existence of free alternatives is not enough to make the use of flash acceptable: Because if the free alternatives are not widely used they will have hidden costs (convincing people to install players, etc). Proprietary vendors know this and adjust their prices to be just over the hidden costs.

In cases where free formats are healthy and widely used, no proprietary format can thrive, because wide adoption is more valuable than any feature or price. Think about formats like HTML and JPG: Proprietary alternatives exist and have clear technical benefits. Yet they are not used on the web, no one is asking us to use them. When a free format is healthy, no one bothers competing with it. When a free format is not widely adopted, it nearly might as well not exist in terms of its ability to do good for the world.

Since Wikimedia's mission involves helping the world receive and share the knowledge of the world and preserving their freedom in the process, it must maintain its historical commitment to the exclusive use of free formats.

We are in an almost unique position among high profile websites in that our mission is not to maximize short term revenue, but to maximize long term intellectual freedom and knowledge. Because of that our cost function is different than other groups, so while being charged $1/download + $1million cap on some proprietary format is attractive to another site vs the costs of driving serious adoption of free formats, for us it's the other way around. For us the exclusive use of free formats makes more sense even if it were to cost us more, because it is needed for our mission.

Kaltura is actively exploring different ways to build a UI that runs only on open source components:

Can we please start using the words Free Software on these matters? Open source is a pretty broad and heavily overloaded term and only describes a subset of what we have historically accepted. I think you mean free software here, not Open Source, but just to avoid confusion we should probably use the more specific and clearly defined term.

• helping out the Gnash developers

Gnash should be helped, and the FSF has been directing a lot of support at them.. because Gnash is important to getting users to switch to free software.

In terms of the freeness of Wikipedia and the web in general, Gnash does not solve the problem.

For our interest it is far more important that the web, and or own sites, be made of successful free formats than it is that people feel comfortable replacing their Windows/Mac desktops with GNU/Linux.

Gnash doesn't stop the propritarization of the web, it just helps avoid locking out free software desktops a form of collateral damage.

• implementing a simpler UI using either HTML/JavaScript, or Java

If there is an equally powerful UI not based on proprietary tech like flash then we should simply use that, exclusively. At that point about 60% of my argument vanishes. Sounds great. The announcement should have waited for that.

• lobbying for an open source release of Adobe Flash itself,

By all means... As the viability of free alternatives becomes more clear this will become more likely, since it's better to have inertial control if you won't be able to maintain legal control. But don't hold your breath. It'll be another 15+ years until enough patents expire that they won't remain an easy point to gum up alternative implementations at will.

I'm sure they will appreciate feedback from the more technical folks on this list to work towards a fully open source solution for both the player and the editor components.

They've been highly responsive in addressing community concerns, which is the primary reason we're working with them: if our cooperation with them incentivizes them to

• change their license from CC-BY-NC-SA to CC-BY-SA

Which they did, apparently without notice to the copyright holders of the already uploaded user contributed content on their site. Ugh.

• release their existing code under GPLv3

It's nice for people to release things, but equivalents everything they have released has long existed in already open form. There are other mediawiki extensions that add an embed tag, and other open flash video editors. Additionally, these other solutions are already complete while the Kaltura stuff depends on secret sauce

• seriously explore Ogg Theora & Ogg Vorbis codecs

Welp you've asked them to waste their time then: You can't currently implement Theora or Vorbis codecs in flash like you can in Java. People have explored this in depth.

• publicly support open standards & open source

s/support/lip service/ ::shrugs:: It's better than nothing.

• work towards a 100% open collaborative video solution,

Working is nice, but you need to have a realistic roadmap. So long as flash is on the table, and so long as their are not surprising changes, this goal is not possible.

[snip]

The primary cost associated with this project is the time spent on mailing lists arguing about it :-)

The skill of communication, and especially listening, has the amazing power of dispelling many arguments.

You have personally advocated flash in several different forms on our lists in the past and many people have listened, then told you why they do not consider it acceptable. Unfortunately, you did not listen, and have gone on to put us on this path of disagreement.

This isn't even just a case of taking action which disregards pre-existing community efforts without consulting the community, it's also a case of taking an action which you should have known was squarely against a long and widely held position on the acceptability of flash.

I asked several pointed questions regarding the foundation's failure here to promote the works of our own contributors, or pre-existing free software implementations, rather than rewarding a "prodigal sons" who hasn't even yet completed the promises. While my reply was targeted at Jay, it seems that you're probably in a much more informed position to respond, by no means should my questions be considered limited to any person. I'd love to hear replies from anyone in the foundation on this subject.

On 1/18/08, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:

I'm disappointed to see that the Wikimedia foundation has yet again missed an effort to use its viability, both internally to the community and externally, to promote pre-existing community driven

As has been pointed out many times, there is no exclusivity here. Just last December, Sue & I allocated a substantial piece of our Wikiversity presentation time at Stanford to let Michael Dale talk about MetaVid; we're hosting it in our SVN repository, and I've also offered that we would endorse grant proposals or be happy to support the project in other reasonable ways. It's not mature enough for real world deployment on WMF sites; nor is Kaltura.

I'm not going to argue with you about the technical merits of either approach. There's no point in doing so: I am happy to let the open source ecosystem compete for the most viable solution. Your arguments regarding volunteer time are questionable at best; people will either choose not to participate for the reasons you've given or others, or if they do, then we can assume that they have made up their own mind. We're quite transparent about what Kaltura is and what it isn't.

Putting out a press release and inviting users to participate in an external beta test in order to incentivize open source and open standards within previously proprietary technology is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and I'll be happy for us to do it again if and when the opportunity arises again. It's in line with our mission and our values: free culture is an open movement that reaches out to others, rather than excluding them, in an effort to transform society.

The Wikimedia Foundation is not an isolationist organization. We don't want to be an island -- we want to be the ocean.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

Erik Moeller wrote:

I'm not going to argue with you about the technical merits of either approach. There's no point in doing so: I am happy to let the open source ecosystem compete for the most viable solution.

Care to clarify that? If you mean compete *within* the open source ecosystem, then yeah, that's what we're already doing. If you mean having open source compete against proprietary technology, then you've missed the point of the Wikimedia Foundation entirely. We do not use Flash because it is not free, in all senses of the word. It is not gratis, because there is a large tax in the form of the program for making Flash that has to be bought, and it is not libre. How is Flash at all acceptable?

Keep in mind, in every other area, we've always favored truly free formats over proprietary: SVG, Ogg, etc. Why stop now? Why are we supporting Kaltura, which isn't really free beyond a trivial open sourced MediaWiki plugin?

On 19/01/2008, Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org wrote:

We're not supporting them at all except insofar as we're encouraging them to take it *COMPLETELY* open-source, INCLUDING server-side, INCLUDING Ogg Theora, INCLUDING improvements to f/oss alternatives such as Gnash, etc. (And yes I know Gnash doesn't solve every problem with Flash.) Encouraging them to move their tool in the directions we favor is the ONLY thing we're doing. We won't even consider touching the software itself with a hundred-foot pole until they can support the free environment and formats we require. That's a condition they're well aware of.

And if they can do a successful VC-funded startup entirely on free software, it will tremendously help the production of free software; and if we can help that along, t creates better conditions for us too.

- d.

Gregory Maxwell wrote:

On Jan 19, 2008 3:29 PM, Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org wrote: [snip]

...

We won't even consider touching the software itself with a hundred-foot pole until they can support the free environment and formats we require. That's a condition they're well aware of.

I hear you Brion. But not everyone is saying the same thing here.

If it were all really that simple the press release could have said something like "We think this sounds interesting, and we'll give it a poke once they figure out how to make it open".

IIRC, that's pretty much what our press release says once you strip the PR fluff.

But instead we've got some foundation staff counter concerns by arguing that a strong commitment to free formats is a form of religious fundamentalism. And this isn't new, and I don't bring it up to single out Godwin, Erik used a similar approach in a prior argument for flash ("dogmatic isolationism", saying I can't assume good faith).

I should warn you that Mike likes to argue both sides of an issue; he's quite the lawyer. :)

The argument that the concerns do not matter does not jive with your position that we will do nothing until the concerns are addressed.

I appreciate your words on this matter and I am not claiming that Wikimedia is, as of yet, deploying anything objectionable. Rather, by discussing our concerns about the apparent direction we're will hopefully make it clear to everyone that we consider these issues important.

[snip]

...

Encouraging them to move their tool in the directions we favor is the ONLY thing we're doing.

And the counter is that their tool, while written in flash, can't get to where we really would need it to be.

As I've mentioned in my other post, Flash brings both benefits and problems. It's a matter of what the tradeoffs are, and I should point out that:

1) Reasonable people may disagree on how important the various pluses and minus are

2) No decision has yet been made on whether patent-encumbered codecs should be forbidden as compatibility-alternates alongside patent-free codecs (a decision to forbid them would pretty much knock out any potential for us to use Flash, while a decision to allow them would keep it available in our toolbox)

A better direction is good, but there are many other possible partnerships (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FORscene for example) which Wikimedia has walked away from taking which would be in a better position to achieve a solid outcome.

There's not an exclusive deal here.

-- brion

Ben McIlwain wrote:

It strikes me that there are many *actually* free software projects that are already much closer to being usable for our purposes than Kaltura's product. Why aren't we working with them instead of Kaltura?

This isn't a zero-sum game. There's no exclusive arrangement. There's no "instead of" at issue.

Why are we messing around with for-profit VC companies that are at cross-purposes with us when there are many aligned non-profit free software projects we could be dealing with?

First, we don't have a corporate policy to consider profit as inherently evil. That a company is not a non-profit does not mean we should refuse to deal with them in any way.

Second, there's no need to pretend that encouraging one company to support open source and open codecs (Ogg Theora) means we can't work with other groups (companies or otherwise).

-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)

Ben McIlwain wrote:

Brion Vibber wrote:

...

Ben McIlwain wrote:

...

It strikes me that there are many *actually* free software projects that are already much closer to being usable for our purposes than Kaltura's product. Why aren't we working with them instead of Kaltura?

This isn't a zero-sum game. There's no exclusive arrangement. There's no "instead of" at issue.

Nobody ever claimed anything to be zero sum (why'd you bring that up, anyway?).

"Why aren't we working with them instead of Kaltura?" Is an either-or question. One or the other. But it's not one *or* the other -- we can very well work with one *and* the other.

But it'd be absurd to deny that WMF has limited resources. Given our limited funds and manpower, we should be focusing on getting the best deals with those who already have proven free software products that we could be using, not some company who might vaguely, at some point in the future, come up with something usable.

It seems to me that the majority of "resources" at issue consists of time spent in this mailing list thread.

In the *actual* project, we're simply sitting back and saying "neat! make it more open!"

-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)

Hoi, For your information, MetaVid is supported for its localisation by BetaWiki.

Thanks, GerardM

On Jan 19, 2008 9:50 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:

On Jan 19, 2008 2:13 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:

...

As has been pointed out many times, there is no exclusivity here.

Okay, then I'll be looking forward to an nearly infinite number of partnerships with well aligned open projects.

...

Just last December, Sue & I allocated a substantial piece of our Wikiversity presentation time at Stanford to let Michael Dale talk about MetaVid; we're hosting it in our SVN repository, and I've also

My understanding is that Michael Dale was told that Wikimedia would be using Kaltura and that it might consider metavid some day 'in the future'. Perhaps I misunderstood, but this is also appears to be what was claimed in the presentation you gave to Sun Microsystems, and it was consistent with the press release that Kaltura was circulating when I heard this.

The SVN hosting (which started a few weeks ago) is, as I understand it, a direct results of Kaltura-related complaints that WMF is ignoring requests for help from open projects.

I'd ask Michael to respond directly, but I expect he is in Australia for FOMS (Foundations of Open Media Software, http://www.annodex.org/events/foms2008/pmwiki.php/Main/CFP).

Many months ago I asked if I could travel to Australia (on my own dime, none the less) to attend FOMS for Wikimedia. That, today, WMF has no one there speaks volumes to WMF's actual commitment to open media.

Talk is cheap.

[snip]

...

the project in other reasonable ways. It's not mature enough for real world deployment on WMF sites; nor is Kaltura.

Correct. Yet WMF is putting our press releases and calling for community help with one and not the other. And it's not just Metavid vs Kaltura, there are dozens of open media projects which we are not supporting but could and should be.

There are even quite a few open source flash video editors, if there was a reason to go the flash route, and we were approached years ago by the authors of a commercial Java video editor that wanted to work with us. Unlike Kaltura (and metavid), many of these other parties have mature technology.

[snip]

...

I'm not going to argue with you about the technical merits of either approach. There's no point in doing so: I am happy to let the open source ecosystem compete for the most viable solution.

At least you've given me the respect of letting me know that I should not expect an answer from you on those questions.

[snip]

...

We're quite transparent about what Kaltura is and what it isn't.

I don't agree here. The press release says open about a zillion times, but the existing level of openness is not especially high. I think it is misleading, and so do a number of outside parties who have a high degree of expertise in web media. I suppose this is a disagreement which we are not going to be able to resolve.

...

The Wikimedia Foundation is not an isolationist organization. We don't want to be an island -- we want to be the ocean.

That sounds nice, but I'm not sure what it means. I can guess, I suppose.

Being all things to all people is worthless if you are nothing to yourself. The world does not need another ocean, but it does need a collection of uncompromisingly free knowledge. Not because compromises are evil, but because we already have a wealth of compromised options to choose from!

I think that most of the community would be sad to see Wikimedia abandoning the things that make it special and distinct from competing information sources.. Even though doing so might speed our growth and allow us to blanket the world, I think many would consider that a hollow victory.

The Foundation has a specific mission which can only be hurt by adopting proprietary formats. Apparently, you don't agree but you are unwilling to engage in discussion on this matter. While this continues a long standing pattern of failing to address these issues, there isn't much left for me to say in the absence of a counter argument.

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On 1/19/08, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:

My understanding is that Michael Dale was told that Wikimedia would be using Kaltura and that it might consider metavid some day 'in the future'.

We've made no firm commitment to using Kaltura anywhere. This is the problem with speculation about leaked presentations: They lack context & positioning. When we've talked about our technology roadmap to potential donors or partners, we've always made it clear that it's highly tentative & dependent on lots of factors. The Kaltura screenshots are pretty, that's why they are in there.

Many months ago I asked if I could travel to Australia (on my own dime, none the less) to attend FOMS for Wikimedia.

Whom did you ask?

Correct. Yet WMF is putting our press releases and calling for community help with one and not the other.

I'd be happy to have an open-ended discussion with Michael about ways we can drive open source interest in the project.

Being all things to all people is worthless if you are nothing to yourself. The world does not need another ocean, but it does need a collection of uncompromisingly free knowledge.

Wikimedia should always be accessible (including full participation) to people using only free software. That makes sense -- because otherwise, projects like OLPC would run into problems when they want to access our content. One of the ongoing discussions we've had is whether it's OK or not to make things easy & friendly for people using proprietary systems (i.e. the vast majority of web users). My position has been consistently that we should at the very least get a good evaluation of the cost of choosing not to support proprietary systems.

WMF is not the Free Software Foundation; our core mission isn't to promote free video & audio formats. The reason, in my view, that we're supporting them is to broaden access and participation, and to ensure long term sustainability. These are highly practical reasons that sync up with our mission statement. So does, in my opinion, making it easy for users of proprietary systems to access our content and to participate in its development. (I found it interesting, in this context, that Sue implemented Ogg Vorbis on the CBC website, for exactly the same reason: to give more people access to CBC content.)

In the last few discussions we've had about this issue, you've consistently taken the side of what I deem isolationism: against Creative Commons, against parallel distribution, and now against working with a company that wants to embrace open source & open standards as best they can. I don't think that's the majority view in our community, and I don't consider it the strategic stance that the Foundation should take. (Obviously, some of these parameters are ultimately for the Board to figure out and we'll live with whatever it decides.)

There's always going to be some tension between the extremes: Recall the recent discussion on this list about us not making sufficient use of fair use exemptions. I expect that the Foundation will get flak from both camps regularly, both of them making apocalyptic predictions of our future. It's like Wikipedia itself -- as long as it's seen as both a vast right wing conspiracy and a bunch of liberal treehuggers, we're probably doing okay. :-)

On Jan 19, 2008 4:13 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:

On 1/19/08, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:

...

My understanding is that Michael Dale was told that Wikimedia would be using Kaltura and that it might consider metavid some day 'in the future'.

We've made no firm commitment to using Kaltura anywhere. This is the problem with speculation about leaked presentations:

Not about leaked presentations, you've ignored the rest of what I said. About the impression that you have given other people, and about what the planned press release your partner was circulating.

It's an impression you created, if that was an error, or a misunderstanding. Great. There is no reason to be otherwise defensive.

You need to start working to correct it, because this misconception is appearing on news sites like wildfire. For example: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/17/kaltura-partners-to-add-crowdsourced-vi...

...

Many months ago I asked if I could travel to Australia (on my own dime, none the less) to attend FOMS for Wikimedia.

Whom did you ask?

*You*.

I think I've said before that I am very frustrated by this organizations non-responsiveness, and failure to meet commitments. It's a near constant problem, which only appears to be getting worse over time.

...

Correct. Yet WMF is putting our press releases and calling for community help with one and not the other.

I'd be happy to have an open-ended discussion with Michael about ways we can drive open source interest in the project.

And other projects? The point is that Wikimedia hasn't. It's managed to give people the impression that it is too busy to work on these things. It manages to give *me* the impression that it is too busy to work with me.

And perhaps it is too busy, but if thats the case then it puts the lie to the claim that working with one party does not preclude working with others.

Many projects we could and should be working with have existed for years. Some have approached us. Some have submitted code, only to have it bit-rot and be forgotten.

[snip]

Wikimedia should always be accessible (including full participation) to people using only free software.

This much has universal agreement. But you are advocating an approach which does not place users of free system as equals, see below.

That makes sense -- because otherwise, projects like OLPC would run into problems when they want to access our content. One of the ongoing discussions we've had is whether it's OK or not to make things easy & friendly for people using proprietary systems (i.e. the vast majority of web users).

It's not okay for things for people to have to choose if they want freedom or ease of use.

If the free things are not easy, then they are not really free. They come with a price: the price is that you and all your friends must be techno-geeks for you to enjoy freedom. This isn't an acceptable situation.

It's also a situation which doesn't have to last: It is completely solved by avoiding the proprietary formats and helping the free formats become mainstream and gain adoption. So long as you continue to use the proprietary formats you are increasing their dominance through network-effects.

Getting over the hump has a cost, it requires building critical mass. But once it is done .. it's done.

I'm harping on it, but I'm not sure I've been heard: Once a format is truly free, once it has reasonable support and adoption, non-free formats just can't compete. The network effects are just too strong, free is too attractive a price, and freedom creates too much agility. This is why no one is promoting proprietary alternatives to JPG or HTML.

My position has been consistently that we should at the very least get a good evaluation of the cost of choosing not to support proprietary systems.

The words "choosing not to support proprietary systems" is a little misleading. Proprietary systems can a very frequently do read free formats, while the inverse is usually not true.

But I get what you are saying. We should know the cost of not distributing proprietary formated files to our users. I agree that we should, and would even if no one was advocating that we should do otherwise.

Measuring performance is good. I can't measure the success rate of the existing video player anymore, because it's been moved into the software proper (and I suspect the performance is somewhat different now due to bugs created and bugs removed).

We should also do some interpolation into the future in our measurements. Firefox will ship integrated support for free formats (our use, around the time you first advocated switching to flash, played some role in that too :) ). A past estimate is that ~46% of our http requests come from Firefox users. (though the number is probably biased because editors make more requests than most people). So that will be an additional group of users who gain robust support for free video/audio added to the groups that get support via Java, VLC, QT or other means.

WMF is not the Free Software Foundation;

Indeed, it is not, which is why I don't really understand the call of victory for getting a startup video app to release some source. It's nice, but I don't think that it's especially important to what we are doing.

our core mission isn't to promote free video & audio formats.

No, but it is to part of the effective mission to build a world where users have free knoweldge and the freedom to use it however they want. And without effectively free video/audio, they can't get there.

Imagine. I take some Wikimedia content. I build something new. I go to distribute my results. I can now choose between the freedom of a free format, or after paying some fees and accepting some restrictions I can putting up something that joe-average can easily view. Having to make that choice is not freedom.

In that situation there is no free format.

Today, free media formats are not that bad off: By last measure the stuff we were doing was working for a good majority of people.

But they are not quite yet up to the point where they are fully free in practice, and I can tell this because you are taking about the cost of not using proprietary formats. If free formats were widely enough adopted you wouldn't be advocating anything else.

Wikimedia is in a position to drive the adoption of free formats, and has already done a tremendous amount of work already in making that happen.

Beyond that, our community has direct with parallel distribution which hasn't worked too well... The Wikipedia weekly podcasts were offered off site in AAC/MP3/ and Ogg (AAC was required in order for the itunes stuff to work with it). Very frequently the ogg version would be broken or down for weeks at a time, not due to any fault in the Ogg software, but simply because most of the users would just click the mp3 link and go on with life. (it's also the case that the ogg formats were transcoded from one of the other compressed formats and was lower quality, etc)

And this is not some crime on our part: Supporting lots of things is hard and no one does it well.

The cheapest, and best, option long term is to support movement in a direction which will not require us to offer multiple overlapping options. Free formats are the only solution to achieve that, since they can be adopted by everyone, and always are once they are sufficiently successful.

So does, in my opinion, making it easy for users of proprietary systems to access our content and to participate in its development.

It really is a false notion that proprietary systems can't read free formats. Please avoid making that claim. It's very harmful because that wrong position is easily extended to the wrong position that I would advocate excluding users of proprietary software!

In the last few discussions we've had about this issue, you've consistently taken the side of what I deem isolationism:

Ahem. What you "deem". You've in the past made it quite clear to me that you dismiss my views as isolationist, zealotry, and failures to assume good faith. It makes it very difficult to discuss anything with you.

Rather than attacking my motives and character, can we please limit ourselves to discussing that which can be objectively discussed?

against Creative Commons,

I'm not against "Creative Commons", for it's too amorphous a group for almost anyone to be clearly against it.

I'm against some of the confusion that they create, I'm against some of their proposals. I'm against some of their techniques. I enjoy the things they do well. I'm against the idea that you must agree with all of something because part of it is really good. I'm am far from alone.

Many of the arguments I've made on that subject are ones which you, yourself, have made in the past.

If you'd like to point out where I appeared to be simply "against Creative Commons", I'd be glad to further explain the nuance of my position.

against parallel distribution,

The arguments I've leveled against parallel distribution are not unique to me. I think that there it is an important issue to discuss, other people seem to agree. I welcome you to discuss it further. ... Simply claiming that I am "against parallel distribution" as though that makes me a bad guy and walking away isn't fair.

Yes, I'm against it.. I am because I have a arguments to support that it is usually harmful to our mission, and whenever it is not harmful it is not needed.

Parallel distribution in proprietary formats has many similar to arguments against it as parallel distribution option as an option in anti-DRM clauses in free content licenses, which is the established precedent there. Though I think those are also positions you don't agree with.

It my view it's much more important to use only free formats, than any use of free software. The reason for this is simple, when you choose not to use free software it is a personal choice and you accept the results. When you choose to offer non-free formats you remove the incentive for people to adopt and support less popular free formats. While a free formats is a niche player people will constant feel forced to use them by factors outside of their control. Only through rejecting non-free formats will we see the adoption grow to the point where all people will have the freedom to choose free formats.

and now against working with a company that wants to embrace open source & open standards as best they can.

I think I made my fond wishes for Kaltura clear in my prior message. I'm not against them. I'm against us sending proprietary files out to the public. If the office wants to use proprietary files, great, but what we put out to the public has serious long term implications.

I'm sad that Kaltura is caught in the cross-fire.

I'm also unhappy that Wikimedia has not first given attention and energy into promoting our own users, and existing open external efforts. That isn't Kaltura's fault at all.

I'm unhappy that despite prior discussions, staff is acting like people finding proprietary formats is a surprise.

And yes, you hear me say a lot when I am against something. But it's not because I am some huge ball of negativity, but because if you are doing things I agree with I don't need to say anything at all!

[snip]

I expect that the Foundation will get flak from both camps regularly, both of them making apocalyptic predictions of our future. It's like Wikipedia itself -- as long as it's seen as both a vast right wing conspiracy and a bunch of liberal treehuggers, we're probably doing okay. :-)

The danger here is that "both sides" may still also say you are doing wrong when you are doing wrong. The world does not divide neatly into little binary boxes.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

Erik Moeller wrote:

The Wikimedia Foundation is not an isolationist organization. We don't want to be an island -- we want to be the ocean.

Where does it say that the WMF's mission is to be an ocean? Here is our mission statement (emphasis mine):

=== The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a FREE LICENSE OR IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. ===

It's obvious that, if in the process of becoming your ocean, we give up the free license nature, then we've failed.